Para-powerlifter Finlay Davidson says he will be inspired by lifting in front of a home crowd for the first time when he competes for the opening medal of the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
The 21-year-old will line up in the men’s Lightweight Under 72kg category this summer – which will be the first time a Commonwealth Games has opened with a Para-sport event.
Davidson was inspired to take Para-powerlifting seriously by watching the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and is now hoping to threaten a medal in July.
He has lifted at two World Championships but has never featured in a competition on Scottish soil.
Davidson, from Inverkeithing in Fife, is mentored by renowned Para-powerlifting coach Neil Crosbie, who guided double amputee Micky Yule to Commonwealth silver in 2022.
He is ranked seventh in the Commonwealth and while he is realistic about his prospects for gold and silver – with England’s Mark Swan and Malaysia’s Bonnie Bunyau Gustin the standout competitors – he is not daunted by his task.
“Those two are out on their own, they are so strong. But I think I can realistically challenge for fourth at least,” he told BBC Sport Scotland.
“Between now and then, I’m just focused on getting stronger to close the gap with the lifters ranked above me.
“I learnt so much from competing in the World Championships. The first was the junior version – but a lot of the lessons were to do with travel. This time I will be at home, in front of a Scottish crowd for the first time.
“That’s going to be emotional. It’s been my dream to compete in the Commonwealth Games since taking up the sport. I never thought I’d get the chance to do it at home.
4 December 2025
20 November 2025
The 2026 Games will feature the largest Para-sport programme in the event’s history and Para-powerlifting will open the programme on 24 July in the SEC Armadillo.
Davidson is pleased and encouraged at the dynamics of the scheduling.
“Putting para and non-Para athletes side by side is so important – in sport and outside of it,” he added.
“Usually we aren’t competing in the same venue and at the same time at the Olympics and Paralympics, so it is so good that it is happening at the Commonwealth Games. It sends the right message.”
Davidson’s selection was unveiled at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh, as part of All In – Glasgow 2026’s nationwide campaign calling on the nation to join the Commonwealth Games celebration.
All In aims to spark community pride and build momentum through locally led events across Scotland.
“Glasgow 2026 is Scotland’s Games and we want the whole nation to get behind us,” said Davidson.
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Ailsa Cowen
BBC Sport journalist
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It is not every day that you see a goalkeeper score.
Occasionally, though, the keeper throws the rule book out of the window.
Take Anatoliy Trubin. He booked Benfica’s place in the Champions League play-offs with a stunning 98th-minute goal against the mighty Real Madrid on Wednesday.
Alisson – Liverpool v West Brom, 2021
With the scores level in the fifth minute of added time in the Premier League game against West Brom, Liverpool’s Alisson went up for a corner.
He met Trent Alexander-Arnold’s delivery with a header to snatch a vital victory in Liverpool’s Champions League qualification bid.
Peter Schmeichel – Aston Villa v Everton, 2001
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Peter Schmeichel became the first keeper in Premier League history to score a goal, netting for Aston Villa in a 3-2 defeat by Everton.
He came up for a corner in the closing minutes, the ball rebounded towards him, and he smashed it into the top corner.
Paul Robinson – Tottenham v Watford, 2007
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Paul Robinson scored the second goal of his professional career in Tottenham’s 3-1 Premier League win against Watford.
He took a hopeful punt upfield from a free-kick well within Spurs’ half.
Oscarine Masuluke – Baroka FC v Orlando Pirates, 2016
Oscarine Masuluke scored a memorable goal against Orlando Pirates in the South African Premier League.
With Baroka FC trailing 1-0, a corner was only partially punched clear and Masuluke – moving away from the goal – scored a brilliant bicycle kick from near the edge of the penalty area.
Asmir Begovic – Stoke City v Southampton, 2013
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Stoke City’s Asmir Begovic earned a place in the Guinness World Records for the “longest goal” in football.
From a distance of 97.5 yards, his clearance deceived Southampton keeper Artur Boruc to put Stoke 1-0 up after 13 seconds of the Premier League match.
Begovic said: “It’s a cool feeling but it was a fortunate incident. I feel a bit bad for Boruc.
“It is a long ball that got caught in the wind and it took a wicked bounce. It’s not nice to be on the receiving end of those things as a goalkeeper.
Hans-Jorg Butt – Bayer Leverkusen v Schalke, 2004
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Bayer Leverkusen’s Hans-Jorg Butt scored a penalty in a Bundesliga match against Schalke.
Honourable mentions
In May 1999, Jimmy Glass scored an injury-time goal that kept Carlisle United in the Football League.
Sent forward for a corner, the Carlisle goalkeeper scored with virtually the last kick of the game to snatch victory and send Scarborough down.
In 2004 Blackburn Rovers’ Brad Friedel became only the second keeper in Premier League history to get on the scoresheet.
The American equalised in the 90th minute at Charlton, but then conceded a dramatic winner moments later.
Paraguayan Jose Luis Chilavert scored 67 goals in his career, including 14 free-kicks.
He became the first keeper to score a hat-trick during Velez Sarsfield’s 6-1 win against Ferro Carril Oeste in Argentina’s Argentine Primera Division in 1999.
But Chilavert’s goal tally is well short of Brazilian Rogerio Ceni, who spent 22 years with Sao Paulo and scored 129 goals in his career.
Brighton are set to reject a £20m offer from Nottingham Forest for midfielder Yasin Ayari.
Relegation-threatened Forest want to strengthen their squad before the transfer window closes on Monday and have made a bid for the Sweden international, but sources have told BBC Sport the offer will be turned down.
Ayari signed for Brighton from AIK Stockholm in 2023 and has made 66 appearances for the Seagulls since his £3.5m arrival, scoring six goals.
Since arriving in England, the 22-year-old has also had loan spells at Blackburn and Coventry.
Forest have already added a striker to their ranks during the winter window with Italy international Lorenzo Lucca joining on loan from Napoli.
UpScrolled, a social media application created by Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian entrepreneur Issam Hijazi, has surged in popularity across several countries, including the United States, as many users looked for an alternative to TikTok, which was formally taken over by US-backed investors and companies last week.
With Larry Ellison, the owner of Oracle, who is a staunch supporter of Israel and a friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, acquiring a stake in TikTok’s US-based entity, social media users have expressed concerns about censorship of pro-Palestine posts on the popular app. TikTok’s global operation will still be run by its Chinese owner, ByteDance.
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On Wednesday, TikTok permanently banned Emmy Award-winning journalist and Al Jazeera contributor from Gaza, Bisan Owda, sparking outrage and boycott calls from her supporters. The app has also been accused of content censorship around unprecedented ICE violence in the US.
UpScrolled, which was founded only a year ago, surprisingly climbed to the top spot of US app downloads this week, ranking number one in the “social networking” category of Apple’s App Store free apps by Wednesday. It was also among the top apps downloaded by Apple users in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
The app, meanwhile, is gaining thousands of new downloads as disgruntled TikTok users flock to the platform, pulled by its promise of “transparent tech”. The flood of new users momentarily crashed the platform’s servers over the weekend, UpScrolled reported.
Here’s what we know about the new app that’s stirring up the social media space:
Issam Hijazi [X/@iHijazi]
UpScrolled enables the trio of photos, short-form video and text posts, making it feel like a combination of X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. Its interface is similar to X, and users can similarly like a post, comment under it or repost.
So far, users on the app appear to be using it more for text and photo posts, rather than for the short-form videos TikTok is popular for.
UpScrolled also has a “Discover Page” similar to Snapchat’s. By far the most popular topic on the Discover Page is Palestine. Hundreds of posts depicting the continuing suffering in the Gaza Strip, or standing in solidarity with Palestinians, are flooding the app.
Some high-profile figures joined the new flock of UpScrolled users, including Chris Smalls, the American labour activist and former Amazon Union organiser who joined others on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in July 2025 to try to break the blockade on the strip.
Jacob Berger, the Jewish-American actor who starred in the popular American crime series Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and who was also on the Freedom Flotilla, is also on the app.
Some users on the app earlier this week complained that video uploads were crashing. UpScrolled, in an update on the app on Thursday, said that was a result of more user downloads, and added that the bugs have been fixed.
UpScrolled was founded in July 2025 by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian developer who formerly worked with Big Tech companies like Oracle and IBM. It is backed by Tech for Palestine, an advocacy project that funds pro-Palestine tech initiatives.
Hijazi, in an interview with tech news site Rest of World, said he was inspired to leave his Big Tech career behind and build an alternative amid Israel’s obliteration of Gaza, which was declared a genocide by a United Nations Commission of Inquiry. The rate of content censorship across the popular apps, Hijazi said, was a major driver.
“I couldn’t take it any more,” Hijazi is quoted as saying. “I lost family members in Gaza, and I didn’t want to be complicit. So I was like, I’m done with this, I want to feel useful.
“I found this gap in the market, with a lot of people asking why there is no alternative to the Big Tech platforms for their content, which was getting censored. So I thought, why don’t we build our own? I just rolled up my sleeves and built it,” he added.
In a report last year, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese accused IBM and several other Big Tech companies of complicity in what she called “Israel’s genocide”. Social media apps like Instagram, X and TikTok have faced accusations of shadow bans by users posting pro-Palestine content.
UpScrolled claims to moderate only illegal content, such as hard drug sales, but nothing else. Hijazi said the app’s algorithm is not designed to keep people scrolling, unlike TikTok and others.
“It’s not because we don’t know how: it is very easy to design the algorithms to do that,” Hijazi said in the interview. “But I don’t want to do that because I know the effect it can have on people, mentally, especially the younger generation.”
UpScrolled says its feed remains entirely chronological, a feature that has long been removed from other popular apps despite complaints.
Posts on the Discover Page are currently ranked based on engagement, although the team is experimenting with using AI to reorganise the feed, according to user behaviour.
On its website, UpScrolled says it wants to give users a place to “freely express thoughts, share moments, and connect with others”. The app belongs to the people who use it and “not to hidden algorithms or outside agendas,” the company says.
By Tuesday, estimates from the marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower noted that UpScrolled had been downloaded about 400,000 times in the US and 700,000 globally since launching in June 2025.
The app saw a surge in US downloads beginning on January 22 – the same day TikTok signed a deal to create an American-controlled US version of its app.
Sensor Tower estimated that, as of Tuesday, 85 percent of UpScrolled’s downloads in the US had occurred between January 21 and 27.
On Wednesday, UpScrolled was number one in the “social networking” category in Apple’s US App Store, surpassing Meta’s Threads, WhatsApp and TikTok. It was the number six free social app on Google Play for Android users, where TikTok (and TikTok Lite) reign.
The app has also seen a high number of downloads in Canada, the UK and Australia.
“Crazy load on our servers. So exciting!” founder Hijazi posted on the platform on Sunday, after the site reported that soaring numbers of new users crashed its servers.
“Sorry about the errors and glitches, we are increasing our capacity to handle the load. We expect things to become more stable in the next 12-24 hours,” Hijazi wrote.
What are the censorship concerns regarding TikTok?
Since the TikTok US deal went live last week, the tag #TikTokCensorship has been trending on the US sites of social platforms like X and Instagram.
Users are accusing TikTok of suppressing videos in support of Palestine. The ban on Bisan Owda has only appeared to support their claims.
Many are also accusing TikTok of quelling content that’s critical of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), amid outrage over the force’s deadly crackdown on immigrants and US citizens alike. This week, ICE officials killed emergency nurse Alex Pretti, less than three weeks after killing another civilian, Renee Good. Others say any anti-Trump criticism is similarly being shadow-banned.
Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a Tuesday post on X that he would investigate TikTok after users complained of being flagged for content about Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted child sex offender alleged to have ties to numerous high-profile figures, including President Trump.
Separately, TikTok users have complained of video glitches on the app since last week’s business deal. Creators say they are seeing zero views on their videos and are experiencing slow uploads.
In a statement on Monday, TikTok said the glitches were caused by a “major infrastructure issue triggered by a power outage” at one of its US data centre partner sites.
Which other apps have surged in popularity in recent years?
Skylight, which launched in April last year, is another app that’s gaining prominence as a TikTok alternative.
The American short-form vertical video app has gained more than 380,000 users and saw an uptick in downloads over the weekend, according to reporting by tech website TechCrunch.
Hibernian manager David Gray has said he is planning for Kieron Bowie to be part of the squad for Sunday’s Scottish Premiership match at home to Rangers.
The 23-year-old Scotland striker has attracted attention in this transfer window, with Serie A club Hellas Verona having a bid turned down earlier this week.
Hibs signed winger Owen Elding from League of Ireland Premier Division side Sligo Rovers for an undisclosed fee on Thursday and Gray says the club will be prepared for any developments with Bowie.
“While the window is open anything can happen. I’d be naive to comment otherwise,” Gray said.
“Clearly, there’s been interest, there’s been speculation, it’s something that Kieron’s had to deal with all season, because of his level of performance.
“He’s been very consistent in the way he trains, the way he goes about his business. That’s certainly not changed within this window.
“As it stands right now, he’s firmly in my plans to be involved at the weekend. He’s trained this morning and until that changes for whatever reason, that’ll be my mindset.
“Whether Kieron was to leave, I fully expect the backing of the ownership because they always want to improve the club – that’s not going to change. Our mindset is always to try and improve the group.”
Elding, who was voted the Professional Footballers Association of Ireland young player of the year for 2025, has signed a four-and-a-half-year deal.
The 19-year-old scored 16 goals and provided five assists in 38 matches for Sligo Rovers last season.
Hibs say he opted for Easter Road ahead of “significant interest from several other European clubs”, with Austrian side Sturm Graz reported to be keen on Elding.
Gray says the young forward, who was Sligo’s 2025 Player of the Year, has huge potential.
“He has done incredibly well for such a young age – he has a range of attributes and a strong physical presence up front,” he said.
“He has played a lot of men’s football already, has scored a variety of goals and I think he has got a really bright future.
“Certainly there is no pressure in terms of hitting the ground running and expecting big things. He is a young boy coming in and it is his first introduction to Scottish football, but he is certainly an exciting prospect.”
Crystal Palace have agreed a deal in principle worth in the region of £50m to sign Wolves striker Jorgen Strand Larsen, as Nottingham Forest prepare an improved offer for Jean-Philippe Mateta.
Sources have told BBC Sport that Palace’s interest in the 25-year-old striker has intensified in the past 24 hours and a formal bid is now set to be submitted.
Palace broke their club record with a £35m move for Wales forward Brennan Johnson earlier this month but Strand Larsen’s arrival would surpass that deal.
Wolves are open to selling the Norway international this month provided they get a fee close to the £55m they rejected from Newcastle for the striker during the summer transfer window.
Leeds have already seen an offer of £40m rejected by Wolves, and as things stand the Elland Road club are reluctant to go much higher.
Juventus and AC Milan are among the clubs to have shown a concrete interest in the France international.
Mateta is understood to want to play Champions League football, but a move to Forest is understood to be a financially lucrative option for the 28-year-old and sources are indicating that Forest intend to accelerate their interest.
The two clubs face each other in the Premier League on Sunday and no agreement is expected before then.
Palace closing in on Villa striker Guessand
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Nick Mashiter
Football reporter
Palace are also close to the loan signing of Aston Villa forward Evann Guessand.
The Eagles, who looked at signing the 24-year-old last summer, are set to take Guessand until the end of the season in a deal that will give them an option to buy.
Guessand has scored twice in 26 Villa appearances – both in the Europa League – having struggled to establish himself in his favoured central striker position.
The £18.25m arrival of Tammy Abraham from Besiktas this week also leaves him as likely third choice behind Abraham and Ollie Watkins.
And although the Ivory Coast international has been happy to fight for his place at Villa Park, he is expected to leave.
